I WORKED EVERY DAY I POSSIBLY COULD FOR ABOUT A year and a half. Producers had started requesting me because I was in shape, and I was ironed up, and so I was always busy. And then, finally, I had a rare day off.

My friend Trevor had called the day before, but I was tired when I got up in the morning, and I figured I’d call him back later. Rebecca had heard his message on the home phone, and she suggested I call him. When I did, he was freaking out.

“Yo, Terry,” he said. “I was praying for you to call me. And you called me. Dude, get down to Venice Beach. Billy Blanks is down here. I’m down here.”

“Whoa, whoa, what’s going on?”

“They’re doing these tryouts for this thing,” he said. “You’ve got to come down. Dude, I promise you, you’ve got to come down here.”

When I arrived at Venice Beach, there were 300 guys, running, jumping, doing obstacle courses, as part of the tryouts for this new show, Battle Dome. I found Trevor, along with Billy Blanks, and the show’s producer, Stephen Brown.

“Okay, we’re going to run you through different courses,” Stephen said.

Well, I usually worked out first thing in the morning, but for some reason, I hadn’t that morning. This meant I was fresh, and my muscles weren’t tired at all.

I was up against all of these guys on Venice Beach. We were climbing ropes, doing the forty-yard dash. I beat everybody. Trevor kept pointing me out, and how well I was doing, to make sure the producers took notice. Then they put me in a wrestling match. I picked my opponent right up and slammed him right down.

“Dude, this guy,” Stephen said.

They had Access Hollywood film some footage of me.

Well, I killed it. Everything they asked me to do, I did it almost two times better than all of the other guys. I drove home feeling lit up with how good I’d done.

“Becky, I don’t know what that was,” I said. “I don’t know if they’ll ever call me or anything, but let me tell you something, it was stupendous. What a day.”

I was sure the producers were going to call me. A week went by. Two weeks. And then months went by, and I was back to my routine, doing security and reading and writing my scripts standing up. I was working on a movie called Next Friday, and they had me standing outside producer Matt Alvarez’s trailer, right by Ice Cube’s trailer.

As soon as I got home and walked through the door that night, Rebecca was flipping out. We didn’t have a cell phone, so she’d been waiting for me to get home.

“Battle Dome, they called,” she said. “They want to see you again.”

When I phoned the producers for the details of the callback, I had a question.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“Just be as wild and as charismatic as you can,” the producer said.

So on the day of the callback, I went down to Cinema Secrets in Burbank and I had them paint my face in a pattern like Darth Maul. And then I went to a costume store, and I got a space age–looking leather belt, which I wore with spandex compression pants and boots. I looked absolutely ridiculous, like a total fool. But I was so hungry I was willing to do whatever it took. When I drove up to the Sony lot, the security guard took one look at my face and cracked up.

“Come on, dude, this is a movie studio,” I said. “You can’t act like you ain’t seen nothing like this before.”

“Aw,” he said, still laughing as he gave me a pass.

When I walked into the audition waiting room, it was full of all of these huge meatheads who were also there to prove they had what it took to earn their big TV break. They all looked up at me and started laughing, all of them.

“Ah, look at him,” one guy said, laughing and pointing at me.

I didn’t know any of them, and I didn’t care what they thought. I found a seat and went into my own zone. I don’t care, you can laugh all you want, I’m giving it all I’ve got, and when we go home at the end of the day, we’ll see who’s laughing then.

Finally, my name was called, and I did my lines as big and boisterously as I could. They paired me up with two different people, and again, I went BIG. And then that was it. “Okay, thank you, Terry,” the producer said.

As I drove home, I was at peace. I’d given it everything I had, and I felt good.

Several months passed by, and I was back to doing security and wondering if anything would ever come of my audition or my Hollywood dreams.

And then, one Sunday after church, the phone rang. It was a lady from Sony, telling me that they wanted me to go in and meet with them the next day. I was so excited I could hardly sleep. By the time I got to the production office, I was really nervous. I had no idea what this meant. I was ushered into a room with several guys, including Stephen Brown.

“Terry, you are one of our new warriors on Battle Dome,” he said.

“I’m on the show?” I said. “I’m on the show.”

“You’re in.”

There was a moment where I didn’t know what to feel, and I was just hollow. The ground went out from under me, and the sky lifted up, and I was just floating. I had been struggling so hard for so long, and then, just like that, everything changed.

I’m on a TV show. I’m an actor. I never even saw that as a possibility. But I am.

We got picked up for twenty-two episodes, and we would be shooting for six weeks. My character was named T-Money, and he was one of the bad guys, this gangster from Detroit who listened to rap music. I was so excited. And then, just like with my college scholarship and the NFL, I got a reality check. They wanted us to start working out with their trainers right away. Which was great, except for the fact that we weren’t getting paid, and I’d already given my notice at the security firm. So I had to go back and take on more security shifts until we started shooting for real.

And then I was not at all prepared for how dangerous it was. It wasn’t the other contestants I was worried about; it was getting my foot caught in one of the conveyor belts or other contraptions on the set. When we shot the first show, one of the games was basically King of the Mountain, except played on this cone that spun. So they put me on this thing, and I was battling this guy until I flew off. The next guy climbed up to fight the warrior on top. When he got thrown off, his foot turned all the way around so that it was facing the wrong way. From that day on, we were sending people to the hospital nonstop.

Luckily, I didn’t go to the hospital. In fact, I became the show’s breakout star. To make the situation even sweeter, the security force in charge of the show was my old company. Of course, I was experiencing fame only on a small level, but that was still the best possible turn of events I could have imagined.

“Hey, Terry, remember me?” my old supervisor said. “This is great, man. You’re doing good.”

“Hey, man, hey,” I said.

Truth be told, the old me would have been tempted to pull rank and refuse to let them guard me. But I realized I didn’t have to be rude to them. I didn’t have to think that way anymore. I’d gotten out. I was in a different place.

But I still had a few obstacles along the way, like the Christmas from Hell. Shortly after I started on Battle Dome in 1999, we finally had enough money to fly back to Flint for Christmas. While we were there, Rebecca and I were invited to Detroit to have dinner with her longtime best friend. So we left the girls and little baby Tera with Big Terry and Trish. Now, I knew my father had relapsed in recent years, and so before we ever flew to Flint, I’d called him and given him a warning.

“I do not want my kids to experience you drinking, and to experience what I did when I was a kid,” I said.

He’d agreed to be cool, and I’d decided to trust him.

Well, we were about to sit down to dinner when the phone rang and Rebecca answered it. I could tell from her face that it wasn’t good news.

“Big Terry is going crazy,” Rebecca said. “Something is happening.”

I got on the phone with my brother’s wife.

“We’re taking the kids to your aunt’s house,” she said. “Big Terry is hitting your mother. The kids are here. They’re petrified. They don’t know what to do.”

“Oh, no, I told him,” I said. “I told him.”

My kids had never seen anything like that. I still had vivid memories of how awful and powerless I’d felt when I’d witnessed such violence in my home, and so I’d been determined they never would. The fact that Big Terry had done this in front of my kids seemed so disrespectful to me. Now I had to get that image out of their heads, because otherwise they would be shaken up forever. I definitely had been.

I dropped my wife off at my Aunt Paulette’s house, and I called my brother. We met at our childhood home. When we walked in, it was horrible. I mean horrible. I can’t even describe how awful it was. Big Terry had hit my mother so hard that her tooth was knocked sideways. Trish was crying. The air itself inside the house felt different. This was supposed to be the holidays, but it was manic.

“Trish, get in the car and go over to Paulette’s house,” I said.

As soon as she left, Marcelle and I turned on Big Terry as one. It all came back, all of the years when we had listened from our beds to the rumbling in the living room, the many times we’d cowered in the doorway while Big Terry hit our mother until she cried, the many times I’d felt small and powerless and scared.

“We’re grown,” I said. “You will never lay your hands on my mother again.”

I punched Big Terry right in the face. I did. And then Marcelle punched him. All of those years of pent-up anger and grief came pouring out, and we beat him.

“Please stop,” Big Terry begged. “Please stop.”

I was crying, and punching him, and choking my words out through my tears.

“Oh, now you’re going to cry,” I said. “Now you’re going to ask for help. I can’t believe you, you big old man, you’re running around here having everybody afraid of you for all of those years, and now you’re afraid.”

Marcelle was letting it all out, too. We wailed on Big Terry, slamming him around that house, until Big Terry finally fell to the ground.

“Please stop,” Big Terry cried, standing up.

“Man, I’m not a little boy anymore,” I said, knocking him back down. “And I can protect my mother now.”

This went on for hours. Finally, our fight went all the way up to his bedroom, and he was just cowering there in the corner. All of a sudden, I couldn’t do it anymore. I had thought I would feel like he was finally getting what he deserved and it would make me feel better. But I didn’t feel better. I felt worse, because now I was a part of it, too. Now my mother was beat, he was beat, and this was my family at the holidays. It was just so horrible. I fell down onto my knees, and I cried. One good thing did come out of that mess, which was that he never touched my mother again. He realized we weren’t playing, which is how I think it goes with a bully. But there was nothing we could do to save that holiday. We all tried to put on a happy face, but I think we were shell-shocked. My mother’s tooth was sideways. We stayed our few days, and then we flew back home. It would be a lie to say I wasn’t glad to go.

———

EXACTLY TWO YEARS AFTER WE MOVED TO LA, I GOT MY first real acting opportunity. The comedy of it is that if we hadn’t been starving, I would never have tried acting at all. That’s why I always say our struggle makes us who we are. If I’d had a comfortable job, and I’d been feeding my family without any problem, I would have kept pursuing my original dream of being an animator or a filmmaker.

But after Battle Dome aired, I was given the chance to audition for my first movie. I met with the casting director, Judith Holstra, for what I thought was a quick one- or two-day part in a movie. I got the part, and the next thing I knew, I was in Vancouver, with a major role in the latest Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, The 6th Day. My first day on set, a man approached me. It was Arnold’s personal makeup man, Jeff Dawn.

“You look familiar,” he said.

“You told me a year ago that I should be acting,” I said.

“Oh my God.” He laughed. “I’m making people rich here.”

Well, I wasn’t rich yet. Far from it. I’d just started acting, and I was scared I’d lose the part I’d been given. The production was shooting in Vancouver for four months. I didn’t need to be there the whole time, but I was determined to stay.

“Hey, Terry, you’re off for the next three weeks,” one of the producers said. “We’re going to send you back to LA.”

“No, no, I’m just going to stay here,” I said.

I was afraid if I left for even one day, they’d realize I was no good and fire me. Looking back, of course, that seems crazy to me. But I can understand now that this was my mind-set in the aftermath of the shakeup I’d experienced in the NFL. Because I was always getting cut, I was really insecure. I hadn’t had a stable job since I’d left college, and so I assumed things weren’t going to be any different now. I figured if I didn’t leave, then they couldn’t get rid of me, and they’d have to keep me around.

The problem was that I was far from home, all alone, and under tremendous pressure. I had no idea what I was doing as an actor, but I couldn’t afford to lose the job, not only because we needed the money, but also because this was my Hollywood dream, finally coming true, and I was determined that I wasn’t going to do anything to mess it up. And so I acted out, as I’d been doing when I was under stress since I was ten years old. But because this was the worst anxiety I’d ever experienced, I acted out in the most extreme way I ever had. I didn’t sleep with another woman, but what happened was just as bad, perhaps even sleazier. It was like my porn addiction had stepped out of a magazine and come to life.

As soon as it was over, I regretted it immediately, just like I had with losing my virginity in college. I couldn’t believe I’d actually let it go that far. How did this happen? How did this happen? How did this happen?

As I paced my hotel room all the rest of that day, I made a decision: There was no way I could ever tell Rebecca what had happened because she would definitely leave me. And so I would have to take my secret to my grave.

That was a dark time, and it got darker. Although acting out had alleviated my stress in the moment, it did nothing to help me in the long term, and my guilt and shame only made me feel more terrible. I was still lonely, and homesick, and worried I’d get fired at any moment. Only now it was worse because a part of me was also afraid to go home and face Rebecca with my secret inside of me.

Luckily I had one means of actually feeling better, even when I was at my lowest and loneliest. I started working out with a new trainer named Mike Talic, who ended up completely revolutionizing my approach to fitness. I never would have guessed the important role he was going to play when I met him. He was this rotund Slavic man, a former Olympic coach, and a sweetheart. He was not a pusher at all. On our first day at the gym, he stopped me before I could lift a single weight.

“Terry, Terry, let me show you what to do,” he said in his thick accent. “Let me show you how to do it. You have to start with the basics.”

I looked at him doubtfully.

“I’ve been working out all my life,” I said.

“No, no, no, no, you do this move,” he said, showing me. “Then you do that move. You keep doing it, it make you stronger.”

I still wasn’t convinced because I’d never seen anyone train like this. Normally, trainers were all about pushing and pain. I know what I’m doing, I thought. But he was so sweet that I wanted to go along with what he said just to make him happy. I started listening. I was about to do another rep with the weights when he stopped me. “That’s enough, Terry,” he said.

“What do we do now?” I asked, looking around the gym.

“That’s enough,” he said. “Go home. Relax. Let yourself grow.”

Of course, relaxing was harder for me than doing almost anything else, especially when I was so anxious about everything in my life. Some nights, Mike invited me over to his house for a simple dinner. It felt good to be out of the hotel, and the conversations we had, along with those workouts, totally changed my mentality. He taught me a new approach that was more about being patient and being kind. And I found that his gentle example inspired me to work harder, so the next day I wanted to lift a little more than I had the day before. He took me to another level, where I was inspired instead of being kicked.

Mike was very cool, peaceful even, but he made me stronger than I’d ever been before. Most of what I learned through him were actually very basic moves—power cleans, dead lifts—but they made me strong. I realized that so much of the other stuff I’d been taught was just fluff, basically people trying to pose and look good for one another. Whereas Mike gave me a basic, positive approach that made me better in everything, and it’s been the basis of what I do in the gym ever since.

Finally, I made it to the end of the shoot, and I returned to LA. I was so nervous about seeing Rebecca. I knew I could never tell her my secret. At first, it ate away at my conscience. But then time went by, and I tried to put it out of my mind, until I didn’t think about it anymore.

I hadn’t gotten fired from my first movie role, and now I was an actor. I actually started getting fairly regular work in movies, and commercials for big brands like Nike and Jack in the Box. But I never gained confidence. And so I used to just kill myself on every role. Even when I had the chance to work with Reginald Hudlin, who’d become like a mentor to me after seeing my film, Young Boys, Inc., I couldn’t relax. He put me in a movie called Serving Sara, starring Matthew Perry. Because this was my first job acting for Reginald, and he was my friend and my mentor, I pulled him aside, literally, after every scene.

“How was that?”

“How was that?”

“How was that?”

Finally, he wasn’t playing anymore.

“Terry, if I said ‘cut,’ it was good,” he said, sounding irritated.

I suddenly got how much I’d been bugging him. I hadn’t meant to, but I didn’t believe he was telling me the truth when he said I was good. Part of being such an extreme perfectionist was that I never trusted any compliment I was given, and I was always fishing for more. If two people said I did a good job, then I needed five people to say I was good. It could go on to infinity. And, ultimately, it was a losing game. I doubted everything I did. I wanted to be good so badly that I went over my lines until I was delirious. On top of that, I was such a pleaser that I would never make any suggestions to a director or question anything I was told. Even if I wasn’t qualified to do a stunt, I did it. I felt like my job was to do whatever I was told, no matter how crazy. “Whatever you tell me, I’ll do,” I said.

I had spent two years on the TV show Battle Dome, and I’d gotten a few movies and commercials in its aftermath. We’d just had our third child. Things were looking really good for us as a family. After having put up with so much over the past ten years, Rebecca was ready to make her first big demand: She wanted a house of our own, which we owned. I did not like this idea from the beginning. I was still bad with money, and I felt like it was enough that we were finally in a rental house we could afford. And I loved that little barn house. It just felt so good to me. But it was clear that, with three kids, we had outgrown our current living space.

“I don’t know, Becky,” I said. “I just want to sit tight.”

“No, Terry, we can buy,” she said. “Everybody’s buying. We’ve got to just do it. You’re scared.”

No man likes to be told he’s scared. So that got my attention and dinged my pride. But, even more than that, because of all of the bad decisions I’d made during our marriage, and how much I had put Rebecca through, and my dark secret, I felt like she deserved to finally get something she wanted. I couldn’t refuse her.

“You know what?” I said. “Fine.”

I still thought it was a bad decision, but I kept my mouth shut. Rebecca found a pretty house in Pasadena, and our offer was accepted. It was ours. After moving dozens of times in the past twelve years, we had our own home. And then, on the second day after we moved in, all the plumbing went. So I was in this new house, and I couldn’t even flush the toilet. The plumber said it was going to cost three thousand dollars for the repair, and I’d spent every penny we had just to buy the house. I had to borrow the money. It was around the holidays, and I couldn’t afford anything. We didn’t furnish the house. We had nothing.

At least I knew that after the holidays, I’d get back to work on Battle Dome, and I’d be able to climb back on top financially. Well, then the show didn’t get picked up for another season, and we lost our regular income stream. I wasn’t that worried, though. I was getting enough small movie roles and commercials that I knew something would work out. And then there was a commercial strike, and no commercials were being filmed in the city. I didn’t have another movie. I didn’t have a TV show. I didn’t have a commercial, or any hope of landing a commercial anytime soon. And now, for the first time, I had a mortgage. That’s when I started to worry.

Our mortgage was only $1,200 a month, but with no income and three kids to support, I couldn’t afford even that. All of our creditors started calling the house, and calling the house, and calling the house, and it reminded me of college all over again. I thought I’d seen the end of those dark days, but here I was again. I kept telling myself: Just concentrate, Terry. Stay focused. Keep doing what you’re doing—going to auditions, and writing your own screenplays—and something will come.

In the middle of all this financial stress, Rebecca got pregnant again, and now we had a new baby on the way. We began to prepare, and I tried to stay positive. And then, in 2002, a few months into Rebecca’s pregnancy, she had a miscarriage. It was horrible. We had already been through a miscarriage in college, so I knew how sad it was to lose a baby, but this time it was so much worse. I’m not sure if it was hormones, or stress, or probably a combination of everything, but Rebecca was gone. There were days where she wasn’t the same person. She lay in bed, and she couldn’t eat. She wouldn’t talk to anybody.

When I went into our bedroom and tried to get her to eat a little something, or just make sure she was okay, she talked about strange things that didn’t have anything to do with reality, and I worried about her more than ever.

At first, I didn’t want to tell anyone what had happened. The miscarriage felt personal, private. I was ashamed of our financial problems, and I didn’t want to admit to anyone how bad it had gotten. I felt like all of this was my doing, because of my poor decisions and my dark secret. This was our punishment, and we needed to take it. So I didn’t talk to anyone. I just kept my head down and did what needed to be done, which was everything in our house. I made the kids’ lunches, took them to school, did the grocery shopping, took care of the house, picked up the kids at the end of the day, got them fed and bathed and into bed.

All the while, I knew we were losing the house. The letters from the bank kept coming and coming. I had no income, and what little money we’d had was gone. I knew there was no way I was going to be able to pay the money we owed on our mortgage. I finally admitted to myself that I had to find us a new place to live.

In ninety days, our house would be gone. My wife was not all there. And I didn’t know what to do, so I just prayed: What should I do?

And, miraculously, as I prayed, I felt strong. I remembered how, when I was weak and collapsed in on myself, when I thought I hadn’t been drafted, when I thought my NFL career was over after the Packers, Rebecca was the one who was strong, and who picked me up and convinced me I had to keep going, no matter what. And now, when she couldn’t help herself, I knew I had to be strong for both of us, and I was. Instead of spiraling down into a depression myself, I was able to do what needed to be done at home, and for the kids, and even get myself to auditions. No matter what, I knew I couldn’t leave her. And I knew, all over again, that I could never tell her what had happened in Vancouver. I had to keep everything afloat, and I would. But even with all of that, nothing was going to save our house.